Christopher Daniels

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[W2BTD]

Underrated & influential as a founding father of the modern indies.

 

He was ten years older than a lot of the big indie guys of the indie boom, so he was the established veteran of the scene. One of those guys who has never had a bad match, and his ring work is as fluid & smooth as anybody ever. Daniels never blows a spot, and is always where he should be. Somebody once joked that Daniels should do a wrestling robot gimmick, because he's too smooth & fluid, to where he sometimes looks mechanical. In that way, he's almost too good.

 

He has a sneaky list of great matches.

 

-ROH, Daniels vs Low Ki vs Bryan Danielson 2/23/02: The main event of the first ROH show, which is one of the most influential matches of that decade. It is no accident any of the three men were chosen for this. Low Ki was the guy on the verge, Danielson was the future, and Daniels was the highly respected "king of the indies" who was i it for credibility and to hold it together. His role was the most important.

 

-TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles 2/13/05: Against All Odds. You could pick any Daniels/Styles match, from one of the many in TNA, or on the indie scene. Daniels is AJ's best opponent & vice versa. This was one of the better ones, but they all rule.

 

-TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 9/11/05: The epic 5-star X-Division three way from Unbreakable. A pantheon TNA match from when the company didn't suck, and one of the best matches of the decade period.

 

-TNA, Daniels vs Samoa Joe 1/15/06: Final Resolution. Joe is another great Daniels opponent.

 

-TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 2/12/06: Of course they rematched these three at Against All Odds 2006, because why not? Not as good as the epic, but still a MOTY contender level match.

 

-TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 11/15/09: Turning Point, one more time. The forgotten match between the three because it happened when TNA was well into the downfall and many people had stopped paying attention.

 

-TNA, Daniels & Kazarian vs Kurt Angle & AJ Styles 6/10/12: Slammiversary

 

-TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles 7/8/12: Destination X Last Man Standing match. This is probably my favorite Daniels/Styles match, and they probably had a dozen great ones minimum.

 

Daniels was not only a forerunner of the indie style, but he was also one of the greatest X-Division guys when that meant something, and he was also a great tag team wrestler. He was part of four great tag teams, and all were different styles. Triple X was a highspot X-Division team, the Daniels/Styles team was a workrate team, he teamed with Matt Sydal in ROH which was the reluctant teacher with the rival turned student (very, very underrated team & dynamic), and the Bad Influence/Addiction team with Kazarian which is a blend of comedy & great work when called upon.

 

He'll be overlooked & underrated because so much of his career was TNA. But he'll be high on my list. Way too much great stuff to overlook. A pro's pro, a great pro wrestler.

[BillThompson]

Daniels is a guy I'm on the fence about. I see the great matches, the influence, and I generally enjoy his work. But, the smoothness is a problem, because it's not fluid smoothness. Too often it's the sort of smoothness that is over choreographed and kind of like ballet. There are times I'll watch a Daniels match and really appreciate what he's doing, but there are just as many times where I'll watch a match and think he's exposing the business with the obviously choreographed nature of what he's doing,

[W2BTD]

Daniels is a guy I'm on the fence about. I see the great matches, the influence, and I generally enjoy his work. But, the smoothness is a problem, because it's not fluid smoothness. Too often it's the sort of smoothness that is over choreographed and kind of like ballet. There are times I'll watch a Daniels match and really appreciate what he's doing, but there are just as many times where I'll watch a match and think he's exposing the business with the obviously choreographed nature of what he's doing,

 

Yeah, that's what I mean with the "wrestling robot" thing. He's too smooth, too precise, and in a way that is a negative. It's hard to understand unless you see it.

[Shining Wiz]

Always solid, rarely spectacular. Always does a real yeoman's job no matter where on a card he is, but even when he was a focal point of ROH he was the guy I looked least forward too of their main eventers. Not that I ever dreaded watching him, but you knew you were going to get a solid 6 or 7/10 match every time out. Not that that's a bad thing, and he's been remarkably consistent for 15 years now, but he's not someone who I ever really remember being the stand out guy on a card. When we're talking the best 100 of all time I think I'd prefer that not be the case.

[Chess Knight]

Co-sign the robotic thoughts. A lot of this matches feel like he's just displaying a set of moves that he's capable of. Sometimes it becomes completely unbearable to watch. Though, I did think he got pretty good in mid/late-2003. And then there was this Ki match that had me shocked at how much I liked Daniels in it:

 

Low Ki v. Christopher Daniels (ECWA 11/3/01)
Well fuck me. If this isn’t the best match and performance I’ve seen from Chris Daniels then I have revisiting to do. He’s a weird wrestler to me, he’ll trash talk the crowd and kind of act like a heel, but he doesn’t feel like he’s wrestling like one. Here, when he was on top of Ki, it felt like a true heel-in-control match. It would have helped had the crowd not been a smark indy crowd (which probably hurts Daniels looking like a heel a lot), but he still felt like a heel here. He also did things that I’m not used to seeing him do. Grinding his wrist tape against Ki’s face during a crossface (or STF or something), selling damages from a kick between his own moves, spearing Ki mid-cartwheel (that was really fucking AWESOME, btw), etc. Ki has been pretty outstanding in 2001. He debuted, at the earliest, in late 1998, and by 2001 I’d say only Steve Austin and Chris Benoit were having better years than he was in the US. Really a tremendous seller during his offensive flurries, he has a bunch of neat signature spots, and he finds cool ways to use different things. Kicks were a little theme here, and Ki would kick from every position, including while on the floor during and armbar, and to get out of the last rites. I thought they kind of overdid it with the nearfalls, but this is good enough for even a mild nomination. I see fans who were watching this kind of graps at the time talk about how it was awesome, and whether or not it holds up. By the sounds of things the novelty of this kind of wrestling wore off because instead of these shows which were running only a few times a year, you had ROH putting these on every couple of weeks. I totally understand why they’d think that, but I think it also has to do with the wrestling just flat out being better. The 2001 indy I’ve been watching is pretty much early ROH done better than ROH did it.

 

 

There's a good Daniels/AJ from 2012, too IIRC.

[goodhelmet]

I enjoyed the matches from the first few ROH shows. When we were screening recommended matches for the 98 and 99 yearbooks, it was unbearable to watch and most of it looked so fake. They may as well have called the promotion Wrestling School and just called the spots out to see if we liked the execution. Not a guy I seek out or want to see more of.

[soup23]

Those 99 matches made me really fearful of going back to watch his 2001 run which I enjoyed at the time a good deal especially that Low Ki match from ECW and the four way involving Scoot Andrews and someone else I am blanking on. I don't see him making my list as when we get down to the bottom portion, I may have guys technically worse than Daniels but who I connected with more. As a point of reference, I would certainly have Dr. Tom or Smothers ahead of him.

[Tim Cooke]

I was looking forward to the ECWA 11/3/01 match with Ki for the 2000's Indies Project but when we actually got to it, there just wasn't much there. To be fair, Ki wasn't great in the match but Daniels was middling as well.

 

Daniels won't come close to making my list but his one hour draw from ROH in July 2005 was a surprisingly good match live (saw it with Paul, Tom, and Phil) and 9 years later was surpassingly watchable. That was Daniels height for me as the original ROH three way was more about Danielson and Ki, the TNA 2005 3 way was okay but again was more about Joe and Styles. I also liked the Styles vs Daniels last man standing a lot, especially considering that most of their other matches ranged from poor to average.

[Exposer]

I've seen several early ROH matches with Daniels but it hasn't been in years. His best matches are against Joe where he bleeds and sells violent beatings. Otherwise, he's too cute in his execution for my tastes. I don't have the patience for over half of his stuff that I've seen because of it. He will not be making my list.

[bradhindsight]

Underrated Daniels: his 2011 heel work was fantastic (pre-teaming with Kazarian).

[topropepodcast]

Yeah, for me, Daniels didn't really put it together until fairly recently. For so long, he worked smoothly, but didn't really put any character into his ringwork. In a lot of ways, the wrestling robot thing fit. And then, the Bad Influence run being the apex of this, he finally got really entertaining. He's perhaps less fluid, but so much more expressive. He's not a contender to make my list.

[GOTNW]

Another one of the millenial indy wrestlers I like and has plenty of good matches but doesn't really stand out at all. Only seemed to produce great stuff when matched up against superworkers like Joe and AJ. Won't even consider him.

[goc]

I don't see a lot of praise for the early 2000s stuff and I'm not really a big fan of Christopher Daniels myself because I remember when RoH was becoming the hot thing I tried to get into it and just could not fathom how in the world people were seriously claiming Daniels was the "Best Wrestling in the World." All that said, I came across this match with Mike Modest from 2000 APW and actually liked it way more than I expected to.

 

[Ma Stump Puller]

What always bugged me was the "Fallen Angel" shit: he comes down in a cool robe, spooky music, cuts dark promos with fancy editing and then just wrestles like a regular indie-joe that you see around every corner. It's like if Undertaker did his whole deal and then just wrestled like Mean Mark. I know it's a silly thing to pick on, but I feel like it's relevant here in that I just felt like Daniels had no sense of showmanship or entertainment beyond his big moves for a long while. He does those big moves REALLY well, mind you, but there's no fire, no anything behind what he's doing. Rag on Michaels all you want, but when he did his big spots, they felt urgent, dramatic: when he was taking on big monsters and having to do big dives and high-risk stuff just to equalise, you knew he was in danger. Daniels just casually nailing his BME after 20 minutes of taking brutal offence bugs me out, and it happens nearly every match. 

I think the Kawada quote about a noob Akiyama sums it up: “You’ve got all these moves; now it’s time to learn to wrestle.” Daniels can do the moves, but it took him a while to actually get the hang of not needing to do so much and instead focusing in on what he was good at. For his credit, I felt like he got much better on the mic (him in Bad Influence was probably one of the most entertaining acts in the shipwreck of early 2010's TNA) and paced his matches slower. He had a Two out of Three Falls AJ encounter in 2015 that I think might be their best because both men aren't just doing moves, but creating a narrative, making sense. He has a RoH match with Adam Cole that I really like, because when Cole gets his arm bashed, Daniels focuses in on it, builds offence around working the bad arm, building to bigger and bigger spots. Earlier Daniels would've probably just kept to the same tune. It's that reason that I actually like his later material better than when he was in his prime, because he's a lot more watchable when he's being a smart vet than a over ambitious guy with way too much athleticism for his own good. Same deal with Mutoh to a degree.

Does he stand out in a top 100? I think he actually has a shot at 90 to 100, especially for his later material. He gets really good for a couple of years before his age starts to creep up on him but for those years, he's definitely worth checking out. Vet Daniels having top matches in every random indie he can get his feet in the door is a lot better than his X-Division days for extended viewing in my opinion. He has dynamic matches with a wide, wide host of wrestlers, always being able to get more out of them than perhaps they could do otherwise while pacing the big spots he can still do fantastically.